“Around 6 months ago whilst at work, I came across a tea towel in the staff kitchen commemorating the 50th anniversary of the cat who went to space,” Guy said in a release. “There was no name for the cat on the towel, nor did it resemble Félicette.

“After Googling it, I became fascinated with Félicette’s story, how it had been forgotten over the years, and (like the design of the tea towel) misattributed. It felt like something big should be done to right these wrongs.”

The campaign video is below and seems to have catapulted Félicette back into the public eye. After one day, Guy is nearly 20 percent towards his goal with a month to go.

Guy emphasizes to recognize that Félicette and other animals involved in the early days of space exploration suffered and had no choice in the matter.

“It’s also important to note that Félicette, alongside many other animals that have braved space travel in the name of science, was ultimately an unwilling participant in this experiment,” he wrote. “For this mission alone she, alongside 13 other cats, experienced arduous training prior to the mission and eventually gave her life.”

This 1971 image provided by NASA shows Apollo 17 astronauts, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, left, and an unidentified man, training with the lunar roving vehicle on the Big Island of Hawaii. Before many Apollo astronauts went to the moon, they came to Hawaii to train on the Big Island’s lunar landscapes. Now, decades-old photos are surfacing of astronauts scooping up Hawaii’s soil and riding across volcanic fields in a “moon buggy” vehicle.